Right, then we have to get the terminology right. Will these barebones boards have a bootloader on them? If not, the FTDI interface won't put it there. You need an ICSP programmer (one that uses the SPI interface) and I strongly doubt that the Pic Kit will do that. Its interface will be for PIC chips.

To save costs, if you have at least one Arduino already you can use that as an ICSP programmer. Search for "Arduino as ISP". I wrote a sketch that lets you put code onto SD cards and program bare baords, as described here:

http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=11638

Example in use:

However you can get cheap ISP programmers. eg. This one for $20:

http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/1300

Please post technical questions on the forum, not by personal message. Thanks!

Maybe in a parallel universe, ie programming a PIC. [would be nice if "just once" there was someexplanation attached to those comments, so we wouldn't have to be mind readers all the time].

I have PICKIT2 and PICKIT3 and actually do most of my programming on PICs. The PICKITs and PICs in general use completely different programming algorithms from AVR, and have 3 output pins, Mclr/Vpp [typically 13V for programming], plus SCLK and SDA lines, which are not Sclk, MOSI, MISO.

Also, I've used the UART mode of the PICKIT and it really doesn't work all that well for some reason,butmaybe could be jiggered for downloading sketches to an Arduino bootloader [which is unnecessary in anycase], but doubtful for recoding a raw AVR. Better to use an FTDI Friend/etc on a board without a USBchip.

I also bought one of the AVR programming dongles from Pololu, but never could get it installed properly onmy notebook, so to burn bootloaders, I use 2 Arduino boards connected via the ICSP headers, and run the bootloader sketch from the IDE on the master board.